The New Racial Dot Map

As our regular readers already know, I’ve been playing around with a lot of dot density maps lately. Today, however, we are releasing something new I think you might enjoy even more.

We decided to rehash Brandon Martin-Anderson’s idea of plotting one dot for every person in the United States, but with an added twist. The new Racial Dot Map is an American snapshot; it provides an accessible visualization of geographic distribution, population density, and racial diversity of the American people in every neighborhood in the entire country. The map displays 308,745,538 dots, one for each person residing in the United States at the location they were counted during the 2010 Census. Each dot is color-coded by the individual’s race and ethnicity.

The map is fully interactive so you can zoom into any neighborhood you wish. You can read more about the map and how we created it here.Enjoy!—Dustin Cable is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service where he conducts research on topics that lie at the intersection of demographics, politics, and public policy.